The present invention relates to a method for processing compacted data, and more particularly, to a method for comparing a first set of digital data in compact form with a second set of digital data in compact form in order to process extremely large amounts of data.
Mechanical parts are commonly inspected for defects and for variations from standard size and shapes before being placed into machinery. When a mechanical visual inspection is used a standard part may be inspected and the specification of this standard part placed in some type of storage. The vision system then inspects a plurality of similar mechanical parts and compares each of the inspected parts with specifications of the standard parts. In order to provide an accurate an complete inspection a very large number of bits of information about each of the inspected parts must be compared with a very large number of bits of information about the standard part. Such a process is slow and expensive.